CANDIDATES GET TO KNOW THEIR REPUBLICAN PALS AT THE
LEWES CANAL

The room was about the size of a classroom or perhaps
a small courtroom, and it was full of people who wanted
to be friendly. No wonder Jan C. Ting and Ferris W.
Wharton seemed to be in their element.

Ting and Wharton are going where they have never gone
before -- Ting from law professor to Republican
candidate for the U.S. Senate and Wharton from
prosecutor to Republican candidate for attorney general.

For new candidates, summer is a time of transition to
introduce themselves to their own party members,
stockpile a war chest and audition a stump speech for
the fall campaign and the intensity ahead.

It is a different role even for people like Ting and
Wharton, who are accustomed to being in the public eye.
They could not have asked for a more forgiving
atmosphere than they had in the warmth of a Saturday
evening at a laid-back Republican gathering in Lewes.

The setting was an event sponsored by the Delaware
Federation of College Republicans at the Inn at Canal
Square. With the $35 admission modest enough to raise a
little money but no eyebrows, the College Republicans
drew about 50 people, including state Chair Terry A.
Strine, Vice Chair Phyllis M. Byrne and Sussex County
Republican Chair William Swain Lee.

There is little that could make a professor more
comfortable than college students, and there is no issue
that Ting cares more about than illegal immigration, and
both came together as he hobnobbed with Sheldon Hudson,
a College Republican alumnus, and Kristan Patterson, his
fiancee. Hudson lives is Milford, but Ting's eyes lit up
when Patterson said she was from Canada.

"Did you sneak in?" he asked. She had not. She was
here legally.

In brief remarks, Ting focused on his underdog
campaign against U.S. Sen. Thomas R. Carper, the
Democrat who has won more statewide races than anyone in
Delaware history, and ignored his nuisance primary with
Michael D. Protack, a perennial candidate whom Ting
crushed to win the party's endorsement at a state
convention in April.

"We know we have an uphill challenge. I got into the
race because I'm concerned about things in Washington
being broken. The right people aren't there to fix it,"
Ting said.

One of those "broken things" motivating Ting is
ethics. He criticized Carper for taking campaign
contributions from Indian tribes associated with Jack
Abramoff, the scandal-scarred lobbyist. Carper
acknowledged he received about $7,000 in legal
contributions from two tribes as well as two of
Abramoff's colleagues but gave the money to charity
after the scandal broke.

Wharton turned the campaign setting into a courtroom
of public opinion. The ex-prosecutor (the "ex" stands
for "experienced") is not so much running against
Democrat Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III as trying to convict
him as a pretender with little going for him beyond his
father-the-senator's name.

Wharton scoffed dryly at the conventional political
wisdom that says opponents should be treated as
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. "Anyone familiar with Harry
Potter?" Wharton said.

Naturally Wharton came prepared to make his case,
bringing along Exhibit A. It was a short campaign video
that dwells on his best-known murder trial as one of the
prosecutors against Thomas J. Capano and dismisses Biden
with the line, "Ambition is not a substitute for
accomplishment."

Wharton followed up the video by knocking Biden's
campaign literature, which says, "As a federal
prosecutor, Beau Biden took some bad characters off the
streets. No one was tougher."

Wharton gibed, "I know federal prosecutors from
Philadelphia. There were tougher. His reputation was not
the tough prosecutor but the amiable prosecutor."

Then Wharton gave an impression of how to be both a
tough but amiable prosecutor himself. He told a story
about a conversation he said he had recently at the
Greek Festival in Wilmington with one of Biden's
campaign workers who did not know who he was and offered
him a Biden sticker. It went something like this:

"What do you think about the other guy?" Wharton
asked.

"I think he's pretty good," the campaign worker said.

"Those people you're giving stickers to, what do they
think?" Wharton asked.

"They're for the other guy," the campaign worker
said.

"I'm the other guy!" Wharton said.

The story was a hit. With his listeners softened up,
Wharton made a pitch for campaign contributions, noting
he went into the race at a disadvantage for voter
registration, name recognition and money.

Not in gumption, though. "I'm having fun," Wharton
said. "It's been real positive out there, even from the
Biden campaign workers."